The Lads Need Looking After
by GreyLadyBast
Summary: A Little Devotion is the end, this is the beginning. Probably reads like a budding Mary Sue. I'm not quite lame enough to explain the differences. Trust me or don't, up to you.


Disclaimer: Standard stuff, Rosie's Tolkien's, Clover's mine, you all know the routine by now. Feel free to flame if it sucks, I have thick skin, and an amazing capacity to ignore what I don't like.  
  
The Lads Need Looking After  
  
"I'm telling you, Rosie, something is Up!" Clover Proudfoot proclaimed as she helped her friend clean the Green Dragon. Though Clover worked not there but at the apothecary with her mother, she often assisted Rosie Cotton in her closing cleaning. Otherwise, her friend would never be done in time to help her find the night-blooming herbs she needed. While the hobbit lass, unlike most, had no fear of being in the woods alone at night, a chore shared was a chore halved. So Clover helped Rosie clean and Rosie helped Clover herb-hunt. The arrangement suited the girls well.  
  
"Don't be ridiculous," Rosie scorned. "The only thing Up around here was Mr. Bilbo's Disappearance, and that's long past."  
  
"Yes, but even after Frodo became master of Bag End, he and Sam came in here every night for a mug. Yet neither one of them has shown so much as a foot-hair `round the Dragon for positively ages. And Aunt Esmeralda told Mother that Merry's gone missing, along with Pippin Took. I tell you, Rosie, something's Up!" Clover reiterated.  
  
"And what if it is?" Rosie challenged as she stacked chairs neatly on top of tables in order to mop the floor. "What can you do about it?"  
  
Clover frowned, the expression her friends and cousins privately labeled the "beware, deep thoughts" look. She was obviously taking Rosie's challenge seriously.  
  
"I don't know yet, but I mean to find out! And once I do........." she let the thought hang. Clover honestly had no clue what she'd do. That really depended on what she found out. One thing she did know, wherever Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin had gotten off to, they'd need a lass of sense around to prevent them landing in more trouble than they could handle. Hobbit lads ALWAYS needed looking after, and those four were worse than most. Frodo, in particular, had an adventurous streak, which was precisely why Clover adored him. That adoration was why she fully intended to find out what that hobbit had gotten himself mixed up in, and help him out of it if she could.  
  
Thinking of Frodo put her to thinking of old Mr. Bilbo, the original Adventurous Baggins. Suddenly, an idea struck the lass. She smiled brightly at Rosie, who gulped, sensing a harebrained scheme. "I know!" Clover exclaimed. "I'll go to that elf town Mr. Bilbo always told about. Rivendell. I'm certain, knowing my Frodo and your Sam, whatever is Up has something to do with Elves!"  
  
"But Clover," Rosie protested. "You don't know how to get to Rivendell. You don't know how where it is, or how far away, or anything!"  
  
"I know it lies east of the Shire. I figure if I take the Road that way, I'll sooner or later run into someone who knows the way." Clover wasn't about to let a little thing like lack of directions stop her. In fact, once her mind was made up, she rarely let anything stop her. Proudfeet were notoriously stubborn, and Clover more so than most.  
  
Rosie, however, was determined to make her friend see reason. Bad enough Samwise Gamgee went off on her without a word, she was not letting her best friend go off without an argument. "What if the someone you meet on the Road is one of those Black Riders the Gaffer was telling all about? What then?"  
  
"I'll hide from them. I'm not that big a fool. I want to find Frodo, not get myself killed," Clover replied.  
  
"But," Rosie began again. Clover held up her hand, the gesture as effective on her friend as it was on everyone else. Rosie shut up.  
  
"You want to know what happened to Sam, don't you?" she challenged. Rosie nodded miserably, seeing where this was headed. "Well, I want to know what happened to Frodo. The more I think about it, the more I'm certain they'll wind up in a heap of trouble without someone who has some sense along to keep them out of it, and bring Merry and Pippin down too. My mind's made up, Rose Cotton. I'm going to find our hobbitfolk, and bring the silly lot of `em back in one piece. Those lads need looking after, and that's a fact!" Clover put stood with her hands on her hips, arms akimbo, and looked stubborn.  
  
"Sam has sense..."Rosie began.  
  
"Sam has plenty of sense, but he'd follow Frodo right into a burning volcano without thinking twice, and you know it!" Clover interrupted. She didn't find out until much later just how prophetic her words were.  
  
Rosie could tell there was no persuading her friend. Clover had always been adventurous (her mother was a Took and her father half Brandybuck), and when she got like this, there was no reasoning with her. Nothing to do, in fact, but help her.  
  
"What will you tell your parents?" she asked, bowing to the inevitable.  
  
"I'll not tell them a thing. Dad would fret and Mother would want to come along. This is something best done without them. Besides, if I tell them, they'll tell Uncle Sancho, and he'd try to stop me. He never did approve of my friendship with Frodo, and still hasn't found out I intend to marry him. He'd never let me go chasing off after him."  
  
"You're just going to disappear, like the lads?" Rosie was aghast.  
  
Clover nodded. "Mother expects me to be out late tonight, picking herbs. It's not unheard of for me to be gone a day and night more if the herbs are hard to find. If you tell them I decided to go afield for a bit, they'll believe you. After all, it does have the advantage of being perfectly true, as far as it goes. That gives me a headstart. Maybe I can get all the way to Bree before anyone misses me. I'm sure someone there will know the way to Rivendell."  
  
"What if the lads aren't IN Rivendell?" Rosie asked.  
  
"I'll figure that out once I get there. Right now, I need to get home and make a pack. I can't get even so far as Bree with naught but my skirts." Clover was surprisingly practical once her mad schemes were made. "I only hope I can get in the house and out again without Mother waking," she sighed.  
  
Rosie took a deep breath. She couldn't believe what she was about to say, but the plain fact was that she worried about Sam as much as Clover worried about Frodo. She didn't have the Tookishness to go, but she could help her friend who did. "You can borrow some of my things. I've a pack, and warm blankets, and you and I are of a size in clothes. I can even spare some food and cooking supplies for you."  
  
Clover gasped at Rosie, then hugged her friend gratefully. "Rose Cotton, you're the best friend a lass could ask for!"  
  
Rosie gulped and nodded. "Just bring my Sam back home safely, and yourself too," she said.  
  
"I will, I promise," Clover replied. "Now, let's get me packed and on the Road before we lose any more time."  
  
Rose sighed, looking around the Green Dragon. "We're pretty much done here anyway," she commented, putting on a brave face. Clover led the way to Rosie's house, to get ready to follow the lads into whatever adventure they found. 


End file.
